I try to write in the first person - the first person not of a journalist but of a carnivore, an eater, a gardener, someone trying to figure out what to feed his family.

Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.

It's not food if it arrived through the window of your car.

It's been a mystery to me and a disappointment why conversation about health care reform hasn't turned more attention to the subject of food.

Once you introduce the issue to young people and suggest to them that they have the ability to vote with their forks, either by positively going for certain kinds of foods or rejecting other kinds of foods, they realize that this is a responsibility and an opportunity to shape the world a little bit by their own choices.

In the end I'm still a writer. I'm still a journalist, and my first responsibility is to my readers. That's where I have to draw the line.

Students are very engaged by the issues, and it's not surprising because food choices are one of the few powers a child has.